If they want to make an impact in one-day cricket England must play to their
Test strength: taking wickets with the new ball

Maximisation of the new ball won England the Test series against India. It is also their chief strength in white-ball cricket, the key to their winning the five-match one‑day series against India and, beyond, the World Cup.

On Monday at Bristol, England therefore have to keep on doing what they did to India at Old Trafford and the Oval: not sit back and contain, but pitch the ball – both of them – up, keep the slips in place, and try to dismiss India within 50 overs.

India lasted for 46.4 and 43 overs in the fourth Test, 61.1 and 29.2 overs in the fifth, their batsmen all at sea when the ball was deviating. England’s one-day cricket has always erred on the defensive but now is the time for an aggressive mindset. Autumn has come early, pitches are juicy by nature not design, and although Stuart Broad is to be operated on, they can still field a fine hand of four pace bowlers: James Anderson, Steve Finn, Chris Jordan and Ben Stokes, ahead of Harry Gurney, whose chief strength is containing at the end of an innings.

This has to be the template for England in the World Cup as well. In Australia, especially, and New Zealand, the totals are going to be higher than ever before, as this will be the first World Cup in which only four fielders will be allowed outside the semi-circles. The game-plan is simple if you do not have Mitchell Johnson or a mystery-spinner to bowl mid-innings: knock over the opposition’s top-order batting with the new ball, or else face serious pongo in the last 10 overs.

By playing to this strength, England can go a long way to camouflaging their weaknesses. The first is that their one-day batsmen are not in the habit of making centuries, which form the basis of 300-plus totals. England’s 15-man squad have made 16 ODI centuries all told – and one of those, by Eoin Morgan, was for Ireland. Virat Kohli has made 19.

This is one reason why Alastair Cook is worth his place in the current one-day team. He does ‘go on’: five centuries in 82 one-day internationals is a good conversion rate by English standards. The problem originates in domestic cricket, in the cul-de-sac of the 40-over game which the counties played from 1969 until last year, when centuries were not essential. Only this season has the 50-over game been granted the attention which England must give it if they are to win the World Cup at home in 2019 – and although the Royal London One‑Day Cup has yet to stage its quarter-finals, the new competition has already seen more centuries than last year’s 40‑over competition did.

Cook is also such a good player of spin that he will not be caught out, as his predecessor was, if England’s opponents open the bowling with a spinner on a tired end-of-season pitch in New Zealand, where England will play most of their qualifying matches. In the quarter-final of the 2011 World Cup in Colombo, Sri Lanka opened the bowling against Andrew Strauss with the flat off-spin of Tillakaratne Dilshan – and England’s innings never got off the ground.

Elegant: Ian Bell has the class and technique England need

There is a case for Alex Hales to open with Cook, or to bat No 3 after Cook and Ian Bell. It depends on the quality of the opposing new-ball bowling: if it is high class, you want Bell’s technique; if trashable, you want Hales’s pummelling power that will make opponents panic. The eventuality that England should prepare for is the knockout stages of the World Cup, when the bowling will be high-class.

England’s other main batting issue is which left-handed batsman, Gary Ballance or Eoin Morgan? There is not room for Cook, Bell, Hales and both Ballance and Morgan, making five batsmen who cannot bowl; Joe Root has made himself essential as the sixth bowler and safety valve. Ballance keeps on accumulating, and can clear the boundary when he has to; Morgan has the knowledge, which Cook needs beside him.

Cool head: Eoin Morgan's experience will be crucial in the middle overs

England’s second main weakness is their lack of a wicket-taking spinner to succeed Graeme Swann. Or can Moeen Ali fill the one-day void as well by beating both edges of the bat, as he did in the Tests against India? He has to be tried ahead of James Tredwell, who can be relied on for containment, but who did not take a wicket in his three one-dayers in Australia last winter.

It is not as if Tredwell has translated his county batting – three first-class hundreds – into one-day internationals: a total of 64 runs in 36 games. He did not score a run, or look like scoring one, in the Adelaide international last winter when England, six wickets down, had to score 24 at a run a ball and blew it. Ravi Bopara has paid the price for failing to finish that one off.

It was the same again in the series against Sri Lanka, when England went into the deciding fifth match at Edgbaston in early June. Their tail of Tredwell, Anderson and Gurney made five runs as England were dismissed for 219 in 48.1 overs, when another 20 runs could have made the difference. In the knockout stages of the World Cup England will not win through with such a long tail.

Big chance: Moeen Ali can make the spinning spot his own

To this end David Willey has left his run too late for this series but not for November’s tour to Sri Lanka. England must have a left-arm bowler in their squad, preferably one who swings the new ball more than Gurney, and one who can bat, and field better. Willey last week scored 113 in Northamptonshire’s 50-over game against Essex but, at 24, has work to do on his temperament.

India’s batsmen are the same as those who failed in the Tests – except for Murali Vijay, the only one who coped with England’s new-ball bowling, who has gone home. He has been replaced in effect by Suresh Raina, known to England as vulnerable against the short ball. But they must not be sidetracked, as they were earlier this season when they became obsessed with bouncing out Asian batsmen, before realising the error and pitching the ball up with the odd bouncer.

If England do back off and aim to contain rather than dismiss India, the tourists are far more likely to rally. Besides, while ‘The Cloud’ has not lifted, it has been delayed: the investigation into match-fixing ordered by India’s Supreme Court, which had been due for completion by the end of this month, has been held back because several players are to be interviewed when they return home after this tour.